Former President Donald Trump on Friday accepted the support of the nation's largest police union and indicated he would pursue policies in a second term that would strengthen police immunity and encourage the use of controversial practices such as stops and searches.
President Trump spoke at a gathering of the Fraternal Order of Police (FOP) National Council, which is holding its fall meeting in Charlotte, North Carolina. The visit allowed President Trump to visit key battleground states and to tout the support of the nation's largest police union.
“With your help, we will restore law and order to our streets and our state, and we will give our police officers the legal power to protect us and the respect that you deserve more than any other group of people,” he said.
Named the district attorneys of Philadelphia and Los Angeles, Trump said that if he wins the November election, he will sign bills to “provide greater protections for police officers” and “crack down on Marxist prosecutors.”
He also called for a return to “proven crime-fighting methods like stops and broken windows policing.” Trump has previously praised stops and the practices implemented in New York City under former Republican Mayor Rudy Giuliani.
The city's practice of police stopping, questioning and searching people based on reasonable suspicion that they are dangerous or have committed a crime is Violated the Constitution by a federal judge in 2013.
Trump also said Friday he would push for minimum 10-year prison sentences for human trafficking, life imprisonment for child trafficking and the death penalty for the killing of a police officer, and he reiterated plans to carry out a large-scale deportation operation that relies on local law enforcement.
During the November debate, Trump attacked his opponent, Vice President Harris, as a far-left extremist prosecutor whose roots date back to her time as district attorney in San Francisco.
He argued that she is soft on crime, citing her past support for bail funds for demonstrators during the summer 2020 protests, and cited a list of crimes allegedly committed by immigrants, claiming that her positions on border security encourage crime.
The FOP, which boasts more than 375,000 members, said it took into account both candidates' records, as well as Trump's survey responses and a letter from Harris' campaign outlining her positions on criminal justice and policing issues.
“During his first term, President Trump made it clear he supported law enforcement and border security,” FOP Chairman Patrick Yoesu said in a statement. “In the summer of 2020, he stood with us when few others did. With his help, we defeated the 'defund the police' movement and our crime rates are finally falling. If we want to keep our crime rates low, we must re-elect Donald Trump.”
Trump has consistently positioned himself as the “law and order” candidate, but Harris' campaign and Democrats have countered by pointing to federal statistics showing violent crime has declined under Biden.
Violent crime was down significantly in the first few months of 2024 compared to the same period last year, according to FBI statistics.
The Biden administration has also emphasized federal funding for local police to counter claims by President Trump and other Republicans that Democrats want to cut police budgets, a move that began after the 2020 killing of George Floyd by a Minneapolis police officer.
Harris' campaign and her allies have also sought to undermine Trump on crime issues by attacking the former president over his response to the Jan. 6, 2021, attack on the Capitol and his own legal troubles.
President Trump has repeatedly signaled his intention to pardon at least some of those convicted in the Jan. 6 storming of the Capitol by a mob of his supporters, who clashed violently with police and sought to halt the certification of the 2020 election results.
“Donald Trump will lie because he doesn't care that he endangered my life or my fellow Capitol Police officers' lives on January 6th,” Harry Dunn, a former Capitol Police officer who is supporting Harris, said on a campaign call. “He doesn't care that he incited a mob of violent insurrectionists that day to march on the Capitol, leaving five police officers dead. And now he's running to pardon those very insurrectionists.”
